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Scientists of Morals: Mahatma Gandhi and Immanuel Kant's Experiments with Truth

Once I had privilege to witness a lecture, which was delivered by Prof. Keith Hart at India International Centre, New Delhi. The theme of the lecture was "Cosmopolitanism in Gandhi and Kant". At that point of time, I was a nascent scholar of Law, for me, that lecture was too complex to comprehend by any ordinary mind. However, the basic theme was quite fascinating. The two  practitioners of morals at two different time and space, if they have an opportunity to initiate a dialogue, how will they take each other as a thinker and practitioner of ethics? As a student of Gandhi and Kant I am of the firm view that Gandhi and Kant were two different paradigms of ethics. Gandhi was a scientist who experimented with the conjectures which was there in theology since ancient and medieval times. Kant, on the other hand, was deeply pious and well disciplined as a person who lived for the sake of enrichment of moral laws. Both Gandhi and Kant broke the "dogmatic slumber" of religions and its institutionalised tyranny with their scientific attitude towards moral laws. Kantian Copernican revolution is well known in epistemology. He was a moral scientist who developed the method to search the "categorical imperatives", in literal term, "morally binding duties". He avoided instrumentalist trap in which Bentham, Mills, or Berkeley, had a company with each other. He expounded those three significant methods to find the categorical imperatives, such as, "treat humanity not merely a means but an end in itself". Kantian deontological prudence preferred duty over right, morals law over greed, and desire, autonomy over heteronomy. Similarly, Gandhi as a scientist of moral laws never avoided trial and error method in quest of truth, for he accepted mistakes as his the biggest teacher. Gandhi's Hind Swaraj rejected violence and attitude of violence even though end might be euphorically exciting. Gandhi's ethics prefers "exemplarity" over passivity like a herd. Being exemplar, he led with his actions rather than words. His duty oriented thoughts and actions were quite similar to Kant with slight deviation, like Kant starts with Universal ideas to apply in particular domain, and Gandhi, on the other hand, starts with particular ideas to experiment with it, then it may be universal in character. Interestingly, Gandhi never claimed that what he found as a truth necessarily will be true for all. Does it mean that he was a "moral relativist" thinker? Perhaps, he never claimed anything universal as a moral principle. However, for him, truth and non-violence are the genesis of all morals which he experimented with, accepted, or discarded. 

Kantian ethics had deep influence of "stoicism". A famous stoics, Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditation, "If virtue is accessible to one is accessible to all". Kantian ethics adopts this postulate as a discipline to universalize the particulars, to treat human dignity as the highest virtue, which must not be compromised at the cost of treating a human like a chattel, or a child who needs care and treatment from a father figure. He considered this situation as tutelage from which a person needs to be freed so as to be autonomous and responsible as human being. This was the spirit of enlightenment. Gandhian ethics never denies the very dignity of humans rather he advocates to invent and exercise the virtue. Because, the colonial experience strengthened the believes of Gandhi that it is  "self-dependence" which is far more important than relying over others for emancipation. For him truth is not simply a matter of preaching rather action. Both moral leaders advocated in favour of "courage" to practice the virtue. Both were locally sensitive and universally awakened. They never reached to the ultimate truth, in fact, never aspired to have that. Both remained as students of moral laws in their whole life. And in the end, led by example to have with us the spirit of cosmopolitanism. 

In our contemporary society when market and greed are preferred over our collective existence. Moral laws are crying from the graveyards of two cosmopolitan leaders and saints, but unfortunately there is no such law exists amid instrumentalists, positivists, and, pragmatics students of law.

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